Transformers The Game

Last year’s Transformers: The Movie was one of those that had the potential to spawn a decent tie-in game. After all, giant fighting robots…what could go wrong?

Apparently a few things. The in-game camera never shows what it should be, and the point-to-look scheme makes it difficult to move and aim. The campaigns seem shorter and much less epic than the film. Also, if you want to do something that doesn’t involve shooting a beam at robots or hitting robots, you’re out of luck.

Developer Traveller’s Tales took care of these titles, and their recent success with Lego Star Wars and other Lego games caused the expectations for this game to rise. Unfortunately, the bar is just not met. The base of this game has a GTA-esque feel. Players can transform to either car or robot to travel around the city, reaching destinations and chasing down enemy bots. Unfortunately, it’s hard to make a city feel realistic and interactive, and Rockstar continues to show up the rest of the industry on this front.

The game includes two campaigns: the boring, goody-goody antics of the Autobots and the destructive, slightly-more-interesting escapades of the Decepticons. While the Autobots must protect civilians and property and are more generic car-bots, Decepticons have no such restrictions and have more interesting transformations, such as helicopters. Most missions still consist of finding robots, running up and waggling for a few seconds before moving to the next target. Either way, it ends quickly, and there’s no real replay value.

Things aren’t all bad. Transformers is one of the better looking games on the system, and the voice acting isn’t completely horrible. Regardless, if you like Transformers enough for those to redeem this game, you already own it.